We Still Have A Chance

On Friday, while I waded through waterlogged streets amid traffic snarls post heavy rains in Mumbai, I kept wondering if we are providing enough attention to urban planning. The thought, am sure, crosses each Mumbaikar's mind frequently.

Mumbai is not alone. Time and again, we have seen Indian cities like Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad or any other growing city in the country come to a standstill due to poor urban planning.

On Friday, Mumbai received 125 mm rains in six hours bringing the Maximum City to a halt with rail road and air traffic severely affected. Several areas remained water logged owing to combination of high tide and torrential rains.

Last year, Chennai witnessed unprecedented rains and that had thrown the southern city out of gear. But the reason for hundreds of lives that were lost and thousands rendered homeless lie beyond just record rains.

All of us are certainly aware as to what has led to this situation. Several factors including illegal construction, blocking of water exits and poorly planned or unimplemented urban infrastructure projects have been contributing to these events.

What is more surprising is that at a time when plans of smart cities are making headlines, existing cities continue to be relatively neglected on the issue of urban planning. These events keep recurring and civic body’s response to them remain restricted to few trifling announcements without any concrete execution.

The deluge in Mumbai in 2005 that killed hundreds of lives and brought the city to standstill was also not a mere natural disaster. Rampant concretization and messy modifications in land usages, not to mention the corruption behind all this, had done the trick then. And the scenario has not changed much since then.

One wonders, if the issue of urban planning and its proper execution is seriously receiving the attention it needs to get. Clearly, big cities in India lack a comprehensive resilience plan too. Let’s accept, we are not completely prepared to face these natural calamities.

Following Mumbai deluge, several studies were conducted and fact-finding committee did recommend an action plan. But, all the recommendations on sewage water, illegal construction, slum encroachments are yet to see any major action since the decade-old deluge. And this gets exposed every monsoon when even a couple of hours of heavy rains paralyses the country’s commercial capital.

It’s a good plan to create more growth centers and work around smart cities. But, it is also crucial to focus on basic urban planning and its right execution in existing cities. We still have a chance to move in right direction.

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